Majority of Americans: Threaten Mexico with NAFTA Until They Help Stop Illegal Immigration to U.S.

LOREN ELLIOTT/AFP/Getty ImagesJOHN BINDER4 Apr 2018Washington, D.C.

The majority of Americans say they support President Trump threatening Mexico with tougher negotiations over the job-killing North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) trade deal until the country’s officials help the U.S. stop illegal immigration across the southern border.

In a new poll by Rasmussen Reports, about 51 percent of likely voters said the U.S. should take a tougher line in the current renegotiation of NAFTA to force Mexico to strengthen its efforts to stop illegal immigration and illegal drugs from entering this country.

Only 31 percent of likely voters said they opposed the effort.

Working-class Americans, earning between $30,000 and $50,000 a year, are the most supportive of Trump’s efforts to crack down on Mexico through NAFTA until it helps the U.S. at the southern border, with 60 percent supporting the negotiating tactic.

Wealthy Americans — the most supportive of multinational free trade deals and mass immigration — are the least supportive of threatening Mexico with NAFTA in order to get results at the southern border, with less than 45 percent supporting the plan.

Since NAFTA took effect in the 1990s, at least one million net U.S. jobs have been lost because of the free trade deal. Between 2000 and 2014, there have been about five million manufacturing jobs lost across the country as trade deficits continue soaring.

American likely voters are largely dissatisfied with Mexico when it comes to the illegal immigration crisis. For example, the poll reveals that 62 percent of likely voters say the Mexican government has not been aggressive enough in stopping the flow of illegal immigrants into the U.S.

As Breitbart News reported, waves of illegal immigration from Mexico has contributed to depleted and stagnant wages for American workers. In the California construction industry, after massive influxes of illegal immigration to the state, wages fell from $45 an hour in the 1980s to just $11 an hour today.

In a 2017 report by the Los Angeles Times, the left-leaning paper admitted that at the time illegal aliens began flooding the California construction industry, wages drastically dropped.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.